Bang! The Bullet! - Tips & Strategies

I love getting to play the Outlaws when we have a good game of Bang! going. However, it seems that the headlong rush only works about 50% of the time. What I enjoy doing (and what makes it a little bit more of a strategic game) is try to find who the other outlaws are, then eliminate the other players before finishing off the Sheriff.

When playing with 5 or 6 players, there’s only one Deputy, and his job can be simplified in to “kill everyone but the Sheriff.” So, when playing, if you see someone blasting another player, go after him! Chances are, he’s the Deputy or the Renegade since the Renegade is trying to level the playing field and keep himself alive. Logic puts the Renegade on the Law side since the Outlaws have a 3-2 advantage.

If you can collectively eliminate the Deputy and the Renegade you should have no problem taking down the Sheriff with superior numbers!

The secret identity part of Bang! is not meant to last long, however for outlaws (particularly) and renegades (and sometimes even the deputy) I encourage you to prolong the mystery as long as possible.

Too often players are eager to start flopping down Bang! cards in the first round which quickly reveals what role they have. Instead, when the Sheriff starts shooting blindly to begin the game, if you are an outlaw, try to convince him you are a deputy through verbal manipulation. When it is your time to play, look to get down better weapons, horses, barrels and the like rather than actually firing your gun at someone (you can always apologize for not shooting by claiming a bad draw or occasionally perhaps even fire at an outlaw ally to “prove” your loyalty). The goal here is to keep the Sheriff and his actual deputy confused and consequently not working optimally as a team (and sometimes you can even get the sheriff to unload on his own deputy – which is hilarious).

Even more importantly though, rather than immediately painting a target on yourself, by slow-playing you will usually be left alone while you set up your hand. With a couple of unmolested rounds under your belt, you should be set to do some serious damage when you reveal yourself through an ambush (you typically have made yourself harder to hit as well — a good thing since retaliation is now on its way). By compiling perhaps a volcanic gun, a duel card, Indians etc. combined with a Bang! or two you can do serious damage to any target you decide to bring down.

The suprise attack also causes discombobulation in your target as they have to quickly readjust their thinking and plans – this frequently allows your new found allies to finish the job as the sheriff distractedly changes plans and splits his efforts.

After everyone selects their character card go around the table and introduce your character and a made up backstory that includes your special ability. Extra fun with accents!

Example for Rose Doolan,power to see everyone at -1 at all times. “I’m Rose Doolan, owner of the local hotel and bar. I know everything that goes on in this town and keep a close watch on all the trouble, no one escapes my keen eye and I see everyone at -1.”

It is silly but fun. It can also be a good ice breaker when playing with new people.

Like perhaps all games, Bang! is at its best when everyone at the table enthusiastically embraces the game’s theme. Few themes have more potential for fun and frivolity than Spaghetti Westerns making Bang! a great choice on game nights. The designers of Bang! helped the odds of people getting into the act by providing many different characters to play with humorous names and recognizable personality types.

According to the rules, you shuffle the character cards and deal the character cards out randomly. While that works, I suggest allowing people to select the character they want to play. Doing so provides some excitement as people all scramble to look them over and snag the one they like the best. Much more importantly though, by getting to select the role they play, people are much more likely to fully adopt the role and play it out.

Getting dealt some character whose personality (or abilities) are not attractive to you can start the game off on a bit of a sour note (especially for some). On the other hand, getting to proudly read off who you selected seems to encourage a festive spirit that is contagious.

The next time you play Bang! allow folks to choose who they want to play and watch how folks are much more willing to bring the characters to life.

Of all the colorful characters featured in the game Bang! El Gringo is one of the absolute best! This is because of his hand denial ability… whenever El Gringo gets hit, he draws a card from the hand of the opponent who hit him. When you’re only holding a limited number of cards, that becomes a very powerful ability. To balance his ability out, El Gringo only gets 3 hit points which makes him go boom a lot easier and obviously makes you think twice about absorbing several hits, but despite this he can still capitalize on his ability. He changes how his opponents have to play just about all the offensive cards in the game. Volcanic, Indians, Gatling all suddenly lose their punch against El Gringo since the power of those cards is to draw out misses and pummel your opponent with multiple cards in hand. If you get a barrel in front of him, you open up all sorts of strategic options. Now you can opt not to use the barrel to start his hand denial ability but have it as a backup defense. Beer also becomes a particularly useful card because you can purposefully take additional hits knowing you can drink away the pain. Lastly, if El Gringo gets the tin star and is the sheriff… watch out! He’s now back up to 4 hit points which gives him some protection from dynamite, and has the extra hit point for card denial and can really start to manipulate the table!

One house rule that my friends and I play with, is when someone uses the general store the cards are lined up as normal and the person who played the card gets first pick.

However, after the first pick has been made, everyone grabs a card they want at the same time. This adds more chaos and hilarity to the game.

In the expansion, Knife and Punch have a range of 1, but can be extended (like Panic), with Binoculars or Scope. This logically makes no sense! Our house rule is that Knife and Punch are always limited to a range of 1, regardless of your modifier cards!

When you play Lucky Duke… the first thing you need to remember is, he’s all but impervious to the dreaded stick of dynamite! His ability allows him to draw two cards whenever he has to “draw” and choose one. This means that for cards like dynamite and jail that say “do X if you draw a heart, or club, or whatever” most times you can choose when you want it to trip. However, before you start chucking explosives around, try and get a barrel or a mustang in play to help defend him once your enemies take aim at you for your crazy harry ways. That being said, once you do have some form of defense in place, play the dynamite every single change you get.

I’ve played a lot of Bang! (too much haha) and play with pretty savvy people – so usually drawing the Renegade card is a auto-loss (I think I’ve won with the Renegade twice in 20-30 times as him).

What I’ve started to do now as the renegade is to set my own win conditions – either go flat out for the sheriff or the outlaws. If I do it, then I consider it a win in my mind.. otherwise it’s a loss the same as if I played the Renegade the “right” way 🙂

With a surplus of different characters for almost any sized game, there comes a time when you draw two characters who both simply, suck eggs. This house rule we made allows a player who doesn’t like their 2 choices of characters to draw a third. However, the third MUST be played as your character.